23 thoughts on “Amway 2012 – by the numbers”

There was something like 33 consecutive months of growth in North America. Quixtar hit a billion some years back, but things obviously slipped when something like a third of distributors followed their terminated leadership out with the TEAM dispute. I suspect it was back at or above the billion in at latest 2011, so should have been better in 2012.

Not arguing, but do you have references for those numbers? It’s very hard to find the US numbers since the name-change. The latest I heard was that no direct sales company but Avon(which uses storefronts) is over a billion.

Please read what I wrote. $980 billion was for online sales only. The last figures (2008) had online sales being 75% of Amway North America’s sales. You only need 2% of sales to be offline and you’ve passed the billion.

Sorry, but 90 day weightloss challenges weren’t invented by Visalus For just one example, Beach Body/P90X, which began as an MLM has been doing 90 day challenges since they began. Googling around I’m finding references to a Herbalife 90 day challenge going back to the mid 2000s. Visalus has obviously made it the center piece of their program, but it’s not new.

True, but the “bodykey” is nearly identical, products, kit, logo and all. And month of the others you mentioned have had nearly the growth of ViSalus in the past 3 years. No one has. There’s no question it’s a copycat.

(1) the logos are not even close to identical (2) the key aspect of bodykey is the genetics tests in order to have a properly targeted program. I can find no suggestion Visalus has this. (3) Amway has had meal replacements shakes for decades, long before Visalus even existed. (4) Rapid growth is common amongst network marketing startups. And they all brag about it. Doesn’t mean much.

Heck, I started work on a non-Amway related project back in 2007 that was all about developing small teams of people to challenge and support each other to obtain fitness and health goals. It had to go on the backburner for several years, but that was long before the Visalus challenge.

Look, Visalus looks to have a great product and a great team behind it, but they’re not really doing anything “new”. You could just as easily say they copied other people. All the best to Visalus and yourself with the opportunity, it looks great, but your clutching at straws a little.

Your blog isn’t meant to discuss ViSalus, but I wil respond to your points. I agree challenges have been around for a while, but none has worked nearly as we’ll as Bodybyvi. The Bodybyvi growth is why Amway decided to finally jump on the bandwagon. There are elements of “bodykey,” when you dig into the details that could only come about by assigning people to study ViSalus’ system in depth.

In regards to Amway having shakes for years, this is true, but the reformulation and repackaging is no-doubt in response to studying the competition.

As far as new MLMs always boasting fast growth, this may be true, but none has ever boasted 9million to 700million in sales in 3 years. This, I believe, is why Amway is studying them. They are poised to pass Amway’s N America numbers within the next 1-2 years.

Amway N America is growing at a glacial pace, which is why they boast their 12billion dollar global number and likely part of why they remerged as part of the name-change fiasco.

Any smart company monitors what the competition are doing, and copies what works if they can. I notice Visalus uses a multilevel marketing approach for example. I wonder where they copied that from? A car bonus! Wonder where that idea came from? Amway hasn’t only had shakes for years, it’s had various whole programs, like Life Style Balanced Solutions here in Europe or the HealthPointe program marketed by some groups. What Amway has been lousy at doing (and not just with weightloss) is having focused marketing efforts to really get programs supported and running. They seem to be getting better at that but in my opinion a long way to go.

By the way, a few notes on Visalus sales –

(1) the Blyth Annual report just out says that Net Annual Sales for 2012 for their Health & Wellness division (Visalus) was $623.5 million, so still quite a long way to go to get to a billion. (2) Visalus sales appear to include the retail markup, which is collected and then repaid to reps and accounted as an expense. Amway’s sales does not include retail sales markup. (3) Visalus sales appear to include “free” products given as part of the sponsor three get one free program, then later accounted as an expense (4) Blythe is currently subject to a class action lawsuit by shareholders with the claim they are overstating their Visalus sales. I haven’t been able to find a copy of the lawsuit yet to see what that’s about, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 2 and 3 are a part of the issue.

There’s nothing technically wrong with (2) and (3). Amway used to report estimated retail sales, and currently in the UK distributors and customers all buy at the same price and then get the margin back. If you want to compare with Amway sales though, which you are doing, then on a “like for like” comparison it would appear that in 2012 Visalus was less than half of Amway US sales. I’d also be concerned about the growth sustainability of the introduce three get one free model.

Hmmm, and it seems A LOT of that growth has come from recruiting “MLM Stars” and their downlines from other companies, and a lot of the sales is from the starter kits and V-net subscriptions rather than from re-orders. More than 90% of Amway volume comes from reorders.

To be honest it sounds like all the MonaVie hype all over again.

Oh and look – I can’t believe I missed that. It IS MonaVie hype all over again. $1 billion in sales is cumulative since 2005, so over 8 years.

$1 billion today is worth about the same as $150 million in 1968, which is 8 years after Amway launched.

Amway had cumulative sales of over $212 million in 1968. That’s $1.38 billion in todays dollars.

So your claim about nobody growing as fast as Visalus simply isn’t true. Amway grew much faster in it’s first 8 years than Visalus has.

Get the facts about Amway

Welcome to TTAA

Thanks for visiting! This site is my personal opinions about the Amway company. I've been researching, blogging and commenting on Amway and Multilevel Marketing for more than a decade.Contrary what you may read by people who don't like what I have to say, this site and my commentary is not endorsed or financially supported in any way by Amway, Alticor, the IBOAI or any other affiliated companies or organizations. Follow TTAA on